A stunning gathering of motoring excellence from across the UK auto industry, led by the Top Gear goons and a trio of Jaguar F-Types.


A higher-def clip of the last half (the main parade) is here:

 

I saw that show some time ago, and it was brilliant!

 

Lol..... me too, watched the episode in full, pretty cool

 

Germans don't need to make videos like this.

I would put England behind Germany and Italy with respect to European car industry players. But ahead of France obviously.

 

I think you missed the point . . . again.

 

The difference between the British car industry and the German car industry is a lot like the difference between Jaguar and BMW.

I would rather own a Jaguar, Aston or McLaren than a BMW, Mercedes, or Audi.

 

He's not having a good day, poor fellow.

 

Not to mention Rolls Royce, Bentley, Ariel, Lotus and Range Rover.

 

And also...
http://www.noblecars.com/brochure

 

But Germans make not only their own outstanding cars but also the best parts of "british" cars, like the zf tranny in the f type.

I put Italy before the uk due to the cool and style factor of Italian cars.

France actually makes more cars than the uk but they're almost all utilitarian and boring.

 

Depends on what you mean by "best parts".
German makes great mass produced parts. But as Top Gear has pointed out:

• All Indy race cars, every Dakkar winner since 2009, 35 of 56 Le Mans cars, and the Pagani Huayra have British transmissions.
• 8 of the 11 Formula One teams are based in the UK and manufacture in the UK.
• 75% of global performance motorsport research and development happens in the UK.

I'm not British, but we gotta give credit where it's due and British motoring actually has produces some phenomenal performance products, even if they may not have the mundane reliability of German mass produced stuff.

 

I'm not sufficiently informed on auto and racing statistics to counter that, but my hunch is that someone who is so informed would have an avalanche of german-favoring statistics with which to respond to top gear's probably cherry picked numbers.

 

Lunagry,

Wow . . . why are you trying to turn this into a nationalistic competition? If you watched the piece, the TG guys weren't trying make the point that the UK industry is the best in the world.

The film was all about the fact that most of the world, including perhaps a sizable number of UK citizens, have the now-mistaken impression that the UK automotive industry is nothing but a distant memory, consisting of rusting piles of abandoned rubble. Sadly, much of it was for most of the latter third of the 20th century. It has also been the butt of jokes about electrical systems that don't work (Lucas), that leak fluids everywhere, and that only operate for short periods before breaking down.

The POINT of the piece is that is no longer true, and it is an amazing story of how the UK automotive industry is storming back as a world-class player. As the distant relative of people who fought to kick them out nearly 250 years ago, I'm proud of them.

 

Full of cliche today lunagry.

The numbers may be cherry-picked, but the top gear presentation didn't say Britain makes more luxury cars than germany. But Britain has a very impressive position in the super-luxury segment and in global motorsports.

It's well known that the UK dominates global motorsports. Even the Germans recognize this which is why Mercedes-AMG F1 is based on the UK, Mercedes High Performance Engines (their race engine division) is in the UK, and the Audi LeMans car is also built in the UK. Also VW group makes all its V12 engines in the UK.

You mentioned Italy having a superior motor industry. Interestingly Ferrari went through a review of its F1 organization this year, and the conclusion was that the organization had become too Italian and was unable to attract top talent from the UK and other countries like they had when they were run by Ross Brawn when they were winning world championships. Ross Brawn, himself a Brit.

Recently Andy Cowell (the Englishman who heads Mercedes Benz High performance engines) was asked if he would go work for Ferrari. He said "No, I would much rather work for Mercedes". The fact that Mercedes HPE is in the UK is not small reason why.

 

I'm not going to spend hours and hours learning about formula 1 and all that just to make a point in this thread. But I would bet money that a formula 1 expert could state tons and tons of statistics showing Germany's superiority. And I'm not even sure why formula 1 matters as a measurement tool.

Italy's contribution to the automotive industry is about the style attitude and cool factor. A lot of people probably never cared about supercars until they saw a top Italian model like the countache or testarossa forr example.

P.s. pagani's engine is German.

 

Ummm if you search for formula one engines on wikipedia it has a chart showing the most successful engines and UK ones aren't really on that list. Top 5 or Ferrari ford Renault Mercedes and Honda

Can't link on phone

 

Here is a chart of Formula One engine constructors, ranked by number of wins.
As others have pointed out, the UK dominates high performance motorsports.
Note that the team brand may have nothing to do with who constructs the engine....a Renault F1 team may use a Lotus engine. So you have to look at the constructors.

In any case, I think we're in violent agreement. Germany produces fantastic cars. It's just not correct to claim that one industry is better than the other right now. That might have been defensible 10 years ago, but today the Germans produces higher volume and greater reliability but the British produce luxury, performance, and more growth. It really depends on what you are measuring.

 

Mercedes, Renault and Ford all design, engineer and built their Formula One engines in the UK.

You really are a bit out of depth here trying to quote stats you don't understand to someone who has been deep in Motorsport since the age of 5.

Why not just acknowledge you didn't know about the British role in Motorsport and accept you learned something?

 

The chart on wikipedia's entry for formula 1 engine says otherwise. It's titled " wins by engine manufacturer" with the top 5 being Ferrari Ford Renault Mercedes and Honda . But I don't really know formula one and I don't feel like doing the work to learn about it so I'll drop this.

(This was to sch)

 

is that by virtue of video games or bumper cars at the amusement park?